Choosing a profession begins with imagining yourself in a career: here are all the details you need to get started in the popular field of real estate—from salary expectations, regional challenges, and how to use social media to your lucrative advantage.

What makes a great real estate agent? Is it just numbers? Sales volume? How do you get to the top of the market in boom times? How do you survive a soft market? What tools must you bring to the job? Is it at all like those reality shows on TV?

Starting in his own backyard, Esquire writer Tom Chiarella explores the requisite skills needed to thrive in various real estate scenarios: a static buyer’s market in rural Indiana, a booming seller’s market in Seattle, and the incredibly high-end market of Chicago’s luxury high-rises. Forming a personal connection with each of his subjects, he watches them work in the front seat of their cars, at lunches, on street corners, and in the doorways of homes.

What Chiarella discovers is that great real estate agents devote themselves to the job with a sense of craftsmanship. Showcasing the individual tools used to develop a successful real estate career, Becoming a Real Estate Agent profiles individuals who live a life of thrilling improvisation, action, and instinct—a life in which excellence is sometimes gauged by the ability to walk away from a commission when circumstance demands it.